‘A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland’
By Troy Senik
Threshold Editions, 384 pages

The president for eight years between 1884 and 1896, Grover Cleveland said what he meant and meant what he said. His rapid ascent to the presidency following time as mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York occurred because of his iron-minded insistence on honesty. 

After the corruption of the post-Civil War years and the decades-long Republican hold on the White House, Cleveland aroused Democrats to higher purposes of government. Every effort to make him out to be like other compromising politicians failed. Late in life he observed that most politicians did not realize the political power to be had by adhering to principle.

So why did Grover Cleveland lose his re-election bid to Benjamin Harrison? Troy Senik suggests that Cleveland, steadfastly refusing patronage to fellow Democrats, came off as a sanctimonious bore, and wore out not only his party but fellow Americans who had enough of his moralism and parsimonious employment of federal power. 

Cleveland’s view of limited government sounds like classic Republican conservatism. Not exactly: Anti-imperialist and anti-interventionist, he denounced, in his second term, the campaign to acquire Hawaii. Americans on the ground there had taken advantage of the weak Hawaiian monarchy, and Cleveland would not go along. 

If there is still a mystery in Troy Senik’s Cleveland biography, it is why Benjamin Harrison lost his re-election bid. It is true that Cleveland out of power bided his time until his party realized that the former president was their best candidate. He remained viable because, as before, he seemed above conventional politics. But what was it about Harrison that resulted in defeat?

Cleveland’s second term got mired in a depression and the Democratic Party split over those who wanted to maintain the gold standard — as Cleveland did — and silver advocates, who later found a champion in William Jennings Bryan. Cleveland ran afoul of populists who concluded that Wall Street bankers like J.P. Morgan controlled the president.

Mr. Senik begins and ends his biography with fascinating disquisitions on how presidents are judged as great and not-so-great. He notes that it is difficult to get into the front rank without the opportunity to deal with great crises like war or depression — though at least in terms of messaging, Cleveland failed the test of greatness when it came to dealing with the panic of 1893.

For Mr. Senik, Cleveland’s greatness derives from his unimpeachable character, and in the restraint he brought to public office. He was a huge man, but there was nothing imperial about him or about his conception of the presidency. The federal government, in his view, ought to mind its business and let the states, private enterprise, and the unions get along as best they could.

Although certain historians have ranked Cleveland as high as no. 8 on their list of effective presidents, Mr. Senik concedes that Cleveland’s legacy has largely been forgotten. Why? Because Cleveland was not a good caretaker of his record of achievement. He wrote no memoirs, and did little to organize his papers.

Other factors — the rise of William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic Party’s repudiation of limited government, and the progressivism championed by the activist Woodrow Wilson, who abandoned his early support of Cleveland — made it difficult for Cleveland to be placed in the party pantheon.  

Unlike Theodore Roosevelt, Cleveland did not seek public approval or remain as a contender for high office after his second term, even though certain Democrats, after Bryan was defeated, still yearned for the man of iron. Cleveland fished and hunted, took care of his young wife and children, and did not bother about public approbation.

Don’t skip the acknowledgements in Mr. Senik’s book. They read like a quick course in the study of the Cleveland presidency, showing the sources the biographer drew on and the steady, accumulating evidence of Cleveland’s effectiveness and example.

Why write a biography of Grover Cleveland? The biographer puts the question to himself and to us. He is hoping that, as with Cleveland’s improbable return to office after having been defeated, another Grover Cleveland will arise and redeem with his nobility the very cause of politics and why it matters. 

Mr. Rollyson is the author of “American Biography” and is working on “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History”